126071-wildstar-coming-to-steam
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- This is also true | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Although it was updated today. For example, it was originally in a package with two other (unnamed) items, but those items were removed about an hour ago. With everything that has been going on, I doubt that it's not going to be on Steam. | |} ---- I think they may have fallen asleep again. They've been radio silence since the game came up about 7 hours ago...so, who knows what they're doing. Their PR/Social Media Team is mystifying at times. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I'm not saying it won't happen..just pointing out to people that steamdb entry doesn't mean Steam Store for sure, or in any kind of set timetable (I.e., it could be 18 months from now...) | |} ---- I wouldn't count MMORPG as the definitive source of information on this game. Still fairly certain that's Carbine. Still, the signs are there. I'm hoping for the best of this situation because model change is easy to *cupcake* up. | |} ---- Again, why does Steam mean free? https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8018-TAJK-6238 | |} ---- Its seriously ridiculous how people that are still in denial about everything that's going on and that a change of subscription model is inevitable. Now if you and others seriously cannot handle and accept the information given to you and that this is the final solution you should just quit right now, because its happening weather you like it or not. | |} ---- Who's speaking without facts? And who is speaking with real information we have? It's not denial, friend. It's conviction and principles. The moment the business model changes, I unsubscribe. | |} ---- FWIW, it has exactly the same Billing Type (Free on Demand) and License Type (Single Purchase) as F2P games like Warframe, Star Trek Online, Tera, etc., whereas B2P games, like TSW and ESO have a Billing Type of "Store or CD Key". | |} ---- ---- ---- I honestly don't really mind these types of models. I usually always keep my sub for a game like that but if I have a busy month coming I have the option to unsub but still play. | |} ---- ---- ---- it could just be we are seeing the trial. if you look up final fantasy, there is one for the trial and it says free on demand as well. | |} ---- Ahhh... I see... | |} ---- TSW and ESO are buy to play.....like Guild Wars 2, maybe that is why? | |} ---- That's what I'm getting at. The WildStar one has the same verbiage as F2P games, not B2P games. | |} ---- Could be just for the trial, but I cant think of a MMO on Steam that is purely P2P (not B2P or F2P with subs). But then again I hate using steam. | |} ---- ---- Sorry! I like the idea of WildStar on Steam haha. More exposure = more players = more better! | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Yeah, this isn't the first thread that's happened to today. Not sure what the deal is, but IPboard is acting wonky. Keeping an eye out for any other weirdness. | |} ---- OP dropped group. You are now the thread leader. Would you like to vote to disband or queue up for more posters? | |} ---- ---- ---- More to the point, people go to Steam a lot to look for new games. The idea of advertising this game in popups just doesn't return as much money anymore. Even if the business model isn't changing, I expected them to come to some sort of agreement with Valve, even if it is to FF-style put the free trial on. Wildstar is going to need a lot more exposure. | |} ---- ---- ---- I agree. I'm incredibly impressed with NCSoft and Carbine working to get this on Steam, considering how they haven't put titles on there in some time. It really, really shows faith in the game. | |} ---- ---- Sure, they'd be aware, but the number of people that won't give a game a second look because they can't launch it with the rest of their games is *astounding*. I really do predict a big upswing. People are already talking about how they can't wait to try it once it comes. Plus, once Wildstar hits that Steam store page, everyone will give it a shot, which it richly deserves. | |} ---- You'd be amazed how far beneath the radar Wildstar actually is. Other MMORPG jockeys know about it because it's still a sub game, but the average Halo jock probably hasn't even heard of it. | |} ---- ---- And apparently lost half their sales? | |} ---- Do you find this odd? A decrease in sales is to be expected the longer a game is out this is a natural progression in addition the game does not have a good reputation and the MMO market is highly competitive and filled with a lot of cheaper options that have no subscription or are even completely "free" to a point. So regardless of the improvements made an increase should not be expected till a payment model changes, this was the case for every other mmo so far. With FF being the exception to that rule. | |} ---- Actually it does, because if you'd put me in charge of sales of Wildstar and made the game better, I think I could manage to at least break even. And you think that a game can get better and yet still loses sales, but that must be due to "cheaper" options? And the upshot of that all is that making it cheaper will somehow make the game "better"? If NCSoft can't turn gameplay into money, I don't exactly see why you're ready to heap your faith on them. FF is the exception to the rule because NCSoft just isn't SquareEnix. Maybe they can't be, and F2P is all they can do. | |} ---- Due to actual examples followed by other mmo's yes i believe this to be more likely then your theory. Neither Rift,ESO or SWTOR..... gained significant growth after a series major improvements. Do you wish to argue that the game hasn't improved since launch or even after the first two drops? edit its also about accessibility not making it cheaper | |} ---- going for gold, full speed ahead! | |} ---- Sure, but that was when NCSoft was getting paid per head. You could gain plenty of people (the people currently inhabiting the Youtube, Facebook, and Reddit who have been asking for F2P, for example) and with that alone to incontrovertible damage to the experience. And that's before they are making most or all of their money off a shop. All we know is that Carbine made a great set of improvements and NCSoft's profit was cut in half. So Carbine's improvements aren't making NCSoft any money. That's on NCSoft. And it might very well be that NCSoft simply can't do it. Either way, I have absolutely no reason to think that Wildstar will continue to improve at the rate it has improved, if it improves at all, if the game has no other reason to even worry about it. If the operating idea here is that a game being F2P guarantees it success where the improvements to the game haven't are correct, NCSoft has no reason to prioritize improving the game. | |} ---- Don't get me wrong, I hope you're right! I do remember standing in the SW:TOR booth at PAX '11 hearing people say things like "I think this is an MMO" and that was Star Wars just a couple months before release. So i guess there's lots out there who don't know about it. I feel the bigger chunk is of those that know about it, haven't tried it yet for some reason. | |} ---- No, exposure is a bigger problem than most people realize. I mean, we're a fairly insular subset, MMORPG players. We kind of assume everyone knows about them and the news going on, but it's not the truth. My IRL friends only know about Wildstar because I talk about it. Some have tried it. Most had no idea what it even was. And these are gamers who all had some kind of hive-mind purchase reaction and bought Evolve when it came out. Most people have absolutely no idea that any MMORPG outside of WoW actually exists. Which sort of makes things hard, because Wildstar operates a lot more like God of War than WoW, and those players would need to be reached. | |} ---- How would this damage the experience? I don't see it, i see the opposite scenario happening due to the events that took place in other games. Care to elaborate? A P2P option would most likely exist next to the F2P or B2P option, in addition the more people playing are more people overall paying, this has also been proven to be true in other mmo's that followed this change. NCsoft seems to have been financially standing by carbine despite set backs, they had two options reduce the team to a skeleton crew and not replace lost people or continue to invest and replace and hire new people to work on the game, they chose the latter. NCsoft is a big company one game won't hurt them look at how long CoH was tolerated and kept alive, although sadly CoH suffered from being one of the first games to go F2P and made a lot of errors on that front what didn't create the wanted results. Improvements are needed but people also leave mmo's for other games or reasons that's why it's important to not only work on retention but also on a constant stream of new players, that isn't the proof that improvements don't have a positive effect on the game population it's not that simple. Another major reason why people leave mmo's is that their social structure falls apart with this i mean friends leaving or guilds disbanding. The status quo cannot be maintained changes to the payment mode is needed based on how it aided and other mmo's. I'm personally in favor of a P2P model however if P2P is the only payment model we have to accept it does not work for majority of the mmo's out there. | |} ---- You don't see how this would damage the experience? I'll elaborate. Let's say you have a product. Not just a game, any product. And your product is underperforming compared to what it costs to make. You need to do something with this product to make more money from it. Your options are: -Make the product better at what it does -Make the product cheaper to produce -Market the product and hope to expand your buying circle Now, so far, they've tried option 1. They've made Wildstar better, answered many player complaints, given people things they've been asking for. And that has LOST them money. Think about that for a second. This would be different if they weren't making enough money, but NCSoft have managed to lose half their profits with a better game on their hands. That's absolutely shocking. There were hundreds of thousands of people willing to try this game out at launch who left for one reason or another, so the market exists. Focusing on gameplay is, remarkably, not something they can capitalize on. They cut the box price, which seems to have worked in that they've gotten more people to try the game. But that obviously isn't enough. F2P is a form of advertising. It's not a new concept. When video games proved they weren't really going anywhere in the 80s and 90s, we started getting the exact same deal as kids. People were advertising that you could get a "FREE GAME" in boxes of cereal, or they'd give away games for free online. They're still around; your kids might wander across games on browsers offered for free by companies still pushing toys or fruit roll-ups. Back then, even as a child, I understood that the games were crap. They weren't making money out of the game; they're making money off the cereal and toys. It's nothing but an advertisement gimmick to get people to buy things that we wouldn't normally buy. The only reason it works is if the game is so worthless that you can make enough extra money on the stuff you sell that the game's development is negligible. And all that's changed in an F2P game is that you don't get a toy or cereal anymore, they're selling the product that isn't worth anything for a huge markup IN A SHOP INSIDE THE GAME! That's where the money comes from; that's the focus of your development. The game actually doesn't have to be good, at least not in the long term. It doesn't matter if someone plays an F2P game for a month or a year; all that matters is how much they spent in it. Therefore, the calculus changes. A pure subscription-based game has a per-operator ceiling, and there hasn't been one of those in a very long time. Mostly because the only way to make more money in that environment is to make more people play your game. That's it. If your game isn't entertaining and someone leaves, they don't count as income. You don't have someone showing up and purchasing a thousand dollars worth of stuff in a month, the only way to keep them is to string them along, giving them more to do and keeping them occupied. There's a reason nobody does this purely and there are so few subscription games around anymore. Doing that is exceedingly difficult. Square gets a lot of my respect not just because FFXIV:ARR became a subscription success, but because SquareEnix as a company managed to essentially prove your thesis wrong. Subscriptions can work, even for failing games, but you have no margin for error. Your game has to be phenomenal, your support has to be unwavering, and you have to have a big swinging pair on you to make it work. Companies like Blizzard and CCP have pulled it off for over a decade simply because they've got the rocks for it. NCSoft may simply not. It's hard to say now (it's not like THEY'VE said anything about all this), but they don't seem capable of pulling off what Square Enix pulled off. They don't have the development moxie, the reputation, or anything. The figures just proved that Carbine can make the game demonstrably better and NCSoft would still lose more profit on it. So the obvious question becomes, "Why should we spend all our time and development money making the game demonstrably better?" NCSoft probably just made a bigger chunk of change selling cat mounts in Wildstar than they did by releasing a new instance, and it takes a LOT less people to make a cat mount than a dungeon. So why make the dungeon? Why make it as good? Why make as many? They can make the game F2P and make nothing new, and as long as new people come in and buy 180 dollars worth of stuff, they may as well have been there for a year. And these companies are very good at disguising how these work. In fact, they learned a lot of their methods from casinos. Trading your money over into another form of currency that only works inside the casino and has a different set of denominations? Games of chance that promise you one of several things, knowing some of them aren't worth it to you? Offering entertainment for "free"? The entire idea is to make as many people as possible come in and not realize how much money they're all losing. And it's very effective; F2P game demonstrably take more money from fewer players, yet everyone seems to feel like they're a "cheaper" deal. So to come full circle, why on Earth would you expect that a F2P transition wouldn't make the game worse? More profitable? I can believe that; people have no idea what's going on around them that makes the industry tick. More populous? Sure, I figure flashing some lights and yelling free at the door will have a lot of kids piling in. But you think any of this will make the experience better? You can only pray that gameplay doesn't get worse so immediately with the payment model change due to its structure that you'll have some time. Be happy if they start easy and softly, keeping it gentle to keep people in. With numbers like the ones they're posting, Just having a few free players floating around won't make up the difference between Wildstar and GW2's revenues. They'll get their money, and it won't be through making the game any better than it is. That hope died with that report. | |} ---- I think the big piece that NCSoft/CRB/whoever is pulling the strings has missed is that making the game better doesn't matter if no one knows about it. I remember seeing ads and stuff when WildStar released. When the good drops happened, there were crickets. I saw a few summaries here and there on MMO sites, but these are of course not advertisements designed to make you try the game again. And never mind if you actually waded into the comments section. For ever positive comment that might entice someone to try the game you have 5-10 of the "Ded gam is ded. F2P yet?" variety. Without advertisement, making your troubled product better isn't a panacea in and of itself. If the common wisdom that WildStar has failed is now so engrained in the psyche of gamers that nothing but an ARR could save it, your drop 4 and 5 would have to break through that wall first to tip the scales. The 10-free-days thing was a step in the right direction, but it didn't have enough oomph behind it and lacked the direct connection to the improvements made. With WildStar being a new IP, it doesn't have the pull like FF, so NCSoft understandably doesn't want to try out a complete new release. Never mind someone having to stand up and publicly announce that they f---ed up, apologize to their customers, and promise that they will leave no stone unturned to fix the game. And so they go down the B2P/F2P road, assuming that will provide the positive press push to get people to try it again. If you combine the lure of "we made the game better" with "and now it's free to try out" you might get people to swing by and hopefully get hooked. Vince's wall of gloom and doom certainly paints a dire picture, but I think this is the worst possible outcome. Future updates after all may not be complete and utter soulcrushing sh!t. That's at least a possibility, right? Plus I could happily pay and play the game we have today for another year or two. As for the unwashed masses of F2P trolls, loot ninjas, and spam bots, those can all be safely walled away behind circles, housing plots and ignore lists. | |} ---- I appreciate this point of view, but a lot of it is heavily dependent on how much faith you have in NCSoft and Carbine. You believe it's a possibility, but I think I may have stopped believing that it is. If I still believed they were capable of making this work, I might be less pessimistic about it. However, I gave NCSoft a lot of credit just to try this game, considering their reputation. I gave them a lot more faith just thinking they'd pull through all this. In the end, though, I think I'm just out of faith and credit to lend them. I mean, I wish all the best to the people who stay.and continue keeping up the faith. I'm just tired of telling myself that Wildstar will be a different story to their other games and that things will be different this time, then being proved wrong. There aren't many game improvements that can outweigh the shift in the relationship between ourselves and the game's controlling companies. That's very important, more important than things like vanity pets to me. Knowing the entire dichotomy will shift, the shift of weight in priorities, the development cycles, the monetization procedures, the manner in which we're accounted for, those things matter quite a bit to me. Probably more than to the average gamer. I just can't keep going on keeping the faith that the game will be something it simply isn't going to be able to be anymore. | |} ---- I agree with your overall assessment, and my assumption of your assessment of there being a lack of games that have both an amazing studio building it and a solid corporation behind it that will stand by the studio. I've been playing since EQ1 released in MMO's and for a long while there was always 1 or 2 games that had the right mix and drive to be great games. But over time I have seen more and more games fail and less and less good studios and publishers that I am willing to immediately jump behind and say "whatever those two together make will be golden!". I think this game will survive the F2P conversion in some form. Will it be one that allows the devs to keep making quality content? Who knows.... But I can't think of a single game on the horizon that has been annouced publicly being made that has both a stellar studio making it and a well known and liked publisher behind it. So as MMO lovers, at least for myself I have to decide which bitter pill I am most willing to swallow in order to enjoy my time playing MMO's. With this game almost certainly headed for F2P it really only leaves WoW (which also has a CREDD system now), EVE online, and FFXIV as the remaining P2P games with any pedigree left. I did my time in WoW and FFXIV, never liked EVE long enough to play it for long. FFXIV was close for me, it has all the right puzzle pieces for me except 2 major things. 1) the combat feels clunky and slow, no where near as good as Wildstar imo. 2) The world is very FF'ish but isn't the type of world I enjoy being in 24/7. Otherwise a solid game with the right mechanics for a themepark to be enjoyable. So there we are with my opinion of the MMO market. I just came back to Wildstar 2 weeks ago and am enjoying it again. Here's hoping it survives the F2P transition as something that remains enjoyable to play. | |} ---- ---- Absolutely. If they are indeed going the Tera route, it wouldn't even gate the population. It sounds fantastic. Especially if you can pay with Steam wallet. I can see this game making a ton more than it has been. | |} ---- ---- You can continue to use curse, doubt workshop support is coming it hasn't for ESO. | |} ---- ---- ---- If Steam can just give easier and more ready access to a trial for players who haven't tried it yet, that's all that's really needed. No reason to change the business model. Maybe a play free to 20 like WoW or something would be fine. | |} ---- The massive exp boost is a great idea I think because it made me and my friend want to level on Tera. And we probably wouldn't have given it a second shot unless they had that huge exp bonus event! It really made us excited about leveling. Gosh, I'm well excited about Wildstar coming to Steam. I hope they pull it off and it'll become a success! | |} ---- Why do you want a feature that lets you skip 50% of the game? | |} ---- ---- But your friends can already come play with you, and they can even Mentor down to your level to keep the challenges more in tact. Maybe offering 50x XP could be unlocked if you already have a character at max level. it really does a disservice to the game to usher players to max level without experiencing all of the other content at a pace intended by the design. | |} ---- Like TheBlueMeanie said, it's about catching up. And also the fact that I already have a max level toon on the EU servers but now I switched to NA servers and I just wanted to get levels fast so I can do dungeons and the like! Questing in Tera is not the greatest :) I know some people don't like exp boosts so of course you should be able to disable it if you like. But for some people it's extremely attractive to see that 50-100% exp bonus event going on ;) | |} ---- \ I personally believe that does a great deal of harm to undermine the game experience for players who haven't leveled through all of the zones, gotten the stories, unique rewards, etc. As I mentioned I think may be it would be ok to unlock faster leveling if one already had a max level character. That would be a good solution, yes? | |} ---- I understand your point but it also gets people to level up faster to try the more fun content like dungeons. I think people get enough of the questing content even with a 50% exp boost :) The pace would only get ruined by those who only do quests anyway because you skip around content a lot if you do instances to level. Hey, I have an idea. Why not have an event where you get cosmetic items or other stuff by reaching certain levels. Like if you get a character to level 10 you get this reward, and if you get to level 20 you get this, etc... Incentives, incentives everywhere! It would be account bound as well so that it makes people want to level an alt ;) | |} ---- I think you're being overly generous saying they're skipping 50%. More like 10%? I'm not talking sheer amount of content, because it doesn't make a difference how much content you have if it's boring and uninspired. Leveling content is exactly that. Content you level through. It gets you to were the game REALLY starts. Is this a good thing? No. Not at all. But it's the same tired "RAID OR DIE" trap MMO after MMO falls into. Including Wildstar. Wildstar is a -smidge- better. It should be "ENDGAME OR DIE", sorry... ELDER GAME... since there is more to do beside raid. But it ALL happens at level cap. This is NOT a player problem. This is a design problem. Maybe even a problem that designers don't really feel is a problem? | |} ---- ---- Well see, I think that's flawed thinking that certain other games have instilled in players and is really harming the genre. WildStar was created very carefully to add tons of fun to the questing experience, and also offer things like dungeons starting at level 15 (now level 10) and every 5 levels from there on out. So I don't think the same argument can be made as it can for some other games. Folks do not get enough of the questing experience with a 50% XP boost because that means they're leaving the zones with 50% of the content unplayed. That is super harmful to the intended experience of the game. Otherwise, why else would all of this content be created? Again, I'm open to the idea that once someone has a max level character they can unlock some XP boosts (even then I think game designers would say that's not a great thing.) But for a first run through, I do think there shouldn't be any sort of boost that fosters skipping. That will fix itself naturally as more players come back to the game and level up. Telling new players that everything in the game is null and void except for raids is a terrible precedent to set. | |} ---- Well then the boost would only be beneficial to alts and not to new people. Well, I level mostly through dungeons so all my maps are 50% complete (though I've done most questing content anyway with alts). The point is I can't personally see how it is so harmful. I just know for a fact that with Teras exp boost there were people everywhere, and I want to see that for wildstar! :wub: I think the bonuses outweighs the negatives by a long shot! My opinion though :rolleyes: | |} ---- My experience is that right now, it's not hard to find people who want to do elder game content. It may be in the next few months while people wait for F2P. Honestly, from a gameplay standpoint, it seemed to me that we were on the right track population wise. However, the financials didn't seem to be panning out. | |} ---- I think we have to consider that that can only be said for the PVE megaservers, and that it took the combination of the entirety of the PVE population and the vast majority of the PVP population to make the PVE megaservers look healthy. Meanwhile, the PVP megaservers are still dead. If the population on Entity was split between Entity and Warhound, would the populations on both megaservers be considered healthy, or would people feel that neither were very populated? (I have no idea. I'm just throwing it out there). | |} ---- I'm one of those "the game starts at end-game" people. I play online games because I want to play with other people and that's something that doesn't happen for me while levelling. The only time I do levelling content with randoms are the group missions. I rarely find anybody that's compatible with my preferred rate of play or how often I can do it. Once you get to end-game there are -huge- numbers of level compatible people to play with. FWIW I liked Timeless Isle and LFR Seige of Ogrimarr (when the group had at least half a clue). Heck I even looked forward to our Eternity Vault fun runs. The most fun content for me is real raiding. What little large group content there is for sub-50's simply doesn't have the mechanics. Beta Metalmaw (Deradune) was awesome. The release version is just sad. I like levelling but all too often it devolves into a SP game at least for me. Just on storytelling alone Wildstar simply doesn't compete with SP games where story and storytelling is the focus. | |} ---- ---- Just wanted to swing by and say I agree with this whole-heartedly. Steam presence could be a big boon for WildStar without the game going F2P! :) | |} ---- Lv 50 also includes attunement and amp/ability point grinding, which cannot be accomplished while leveling. So you really don't get to play the actual game of getting your character from fresh 50 to full ability 50 with access to end game content until you jump the leveling hurdle. | |} ---- ---- Don't think they will. NCsoft is mostly focused on the Eastern market and Steam doesnt look at big over there so i don't think they will go into the effort to combine steam and ncsoft accounts. | |} ---- Doesn't have to fully combine them simply allow payment through it and easy login access, would be annoyance to not get things like cards. | |} ----